
Class _4-_fiAi_i 
Book i— -2 . 



Copyright IN^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



ETHICAL AND MORAL 
INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 

BY 
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

ALFORD PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 






COPYRIGHT, I90S, BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






CONTENTS 

Introduction . . . . . . . v 

I. Ethical Instruction in the Schools . i 

II. Moral Instruction in the Schools . 25 

Outline . . .... . 53 



INTRODUCTION 

The problem of moral education 

The problem of moral education is an old one, — 
older indeed than schools. The obligation for its 
solution has therefore rested upon the shoulders 
of others besides schoolmasters ; every responsi- 
ble class in the community has borne a share of 
the burden. That our present discussion should 
emphasize schools and school-teaching merely 
indicates the special form which the problem 
takes in our time. In no wav does it denote that 
moral education is wholly the business of the 
school, or that it is the school's whole business. 
It simply suggests that there is an increasing con- 
scious dependence upon the school as a moulder 
of character. 

Social change in moral training 

The conditions of our American life have 
changed marvelously during the past century, and 
we are now feeling the full momentum of the 
consequences of these changes. The moral weak- 



INTRODUCTION 

ness of men before the pressure of temptations 
arising from our modern life has become pain- 
fully apparent. Something needs to be done to 
make men better able to meet the powerful at- 
tacks upon their moral natures which seem to be 
a part of modern social conditions. Life moves 
swiftly and complexly now. The old day's work 
in the field and the old neighborhood life, with 
its exacting standards of conduct, are for the 
most part gone. Even the home and the church 
are feebler at their tasks than in years gone by. 
We must wait — perhaps long and patiently — 
for these conservative institutions to grow re- 
sponsive and strong in the new ministries which 
our day demands. Where, then, but to the school 
can society turn for release from its threatened 
moral degradation ? It has, in fact, already turned 
to the public school as the most potent factor in 
the solution of the great problem. 

TAe effect of the school's increased "moral 
responsibility 

It has made a large difference in the teacher's 
view of the moral nature of school-teaching to 

vi 



INTRODUCTION 

have his responsibilities thus increased. School 
education has always had a moral end in view 
even while it specifically pursued culture, know- 
ledge, or discipline. But in times past it was no 
more conscious of the particular agencies and 
processes that achieved this end than were other 
less intellectual institutions. The bringing to 
consciousness of the need of moral training in 
the schools has focused the attention of teachers 
upon the work of estimating the instruments of 
school life through which the instincts and im- 
pulses of growth are made into the rounded 
characters of full-statured men. 

Three recent policies in moral education 

In the earnest but somewhat feverish attempts 
of teachers to strengthen the moral power of the 
school, they have not altogether agreed upon the 
worth of the means at hand in school life. There 
may be said to be three distinct positions on the 
question that have been taken by various groups 
of educational thinkers, (i) Those who believe 
that in direct and systematic ethical teaching in 
the classroom lies the best means for enlarging 

vii 



INTRODUCTION 

the moral influence of the school. This belief 
expresses itself in the provision of regular courses 
in "morals and manners," "ethics," "behavior," 
"civics," and the like, — facts about morality 
being taught in much the same way that facts 
about land forms are taught in geography. 

(2) Another group, with a much larger con- 
stituency, hold that all true moral training must 
be indirect, and that it will be best secured by 
maintaining a high moral tone in all the work of 
the school. This indirect method of moral educa- 
tion expresses itself in the extension and super- 
vision of the social activities of school life, and 
in such a reform of classroom methods as will 
lead to more nearly normal modes of doing work. 
The new importance in our recent educational 
literature of playgrounds, school athletics, and 
sociable organizations on the one hand, and of 
the doctrine of interest and cooperation in class 
instruction on the other hand are evidences of 
the progress of this point of view. 

(3) The third point of view is that of the eclec- 
tics. These hold that the policy for the public 
schools to pursue is to extend the opportunities 

viii 



INTRODUCTION 

for moral growth in both of these directions, — 
to give more direct and systematic ethical teach- 
ing and at the same time to enrich the human 
relations of school life by giving them moral sig- 
nificance. This point of view presupposes the 
need of theory and practice in moral training as 
in every other course of the curriculum. 

It is the editor's privilege to offer in this com- 
pact volume a masterly discussion of the issues 
involved in the varying points of view named. 
No more scholarly and practical estimate of the 
worth of the various factors of school life for 
moral training can be found in all our profes- 
sional literature. It is commended not alone to 
teachers, but to all citizens interested in the pro- 
motion of our nation's moral welfare. 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN 
THE SCHOOLS 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN 
THE SCHOOLS 

Within a few years a strong demand has arisen 
for ethical teaching in the schools. Teachers 
themselves have become interested, and where- 
ever they are gathered the question, ** What shall 
this teaching be ? " is eagerly discussed. The ed- 
ucational journals are full of it. In the year in 
which I write there have been published seven 
books on the subject. Several of them — it would 
be hardly an exaggeration to say all — are books 
of marked excellence. Seldom does so large a 
percentage of books in a single year, in a single 
country, and on a single subject reach so high 
a level of merit. I shall not criticise them, how- 
ever, nor even engage in the popular discussion 
of which they form a part. That discussion con- 
cerns itself chiefly with the methods by which 
ethics may be taught. I wish to go behind this 

I 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

controversy and to raise the previous question 
whether ethics should be taught to boys and girls 
at all. 

Evidently there are strong reasons why it 
should be. Always and everywhere it is impor- 
tant that men should be good. To be a good 
man ! — it is more than half the fulfillment of 
life. Better to miss fame, wealth, learning, than 
to miss righteousness. And in America, too, we 
must demand not the mere trifle that men shall 
be good for their own sakes, but good in order 
that the life of the state may be preserved. A 
widespread righteousness is in a republic a mat- 
ter of necessity. Where all rule all, each man 
who falls into evil courses infects his neighbor, 
corrupting the law and corrupting still more its 
enforcement. The question of manufacturing 
moral men becomes, accordingly, in a democracy, 
urgent to a degree unknown in a country where 
but a few selected persons guide the state. 

There is also special urgency at the present 
time. The ancient and accredited means of train- 
ing youth in goodness are becoming, I will not 
say broken, but enfeebled and distrusted. Hith- 

2 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

erto a large part of the moral instruction of 
mankind has been superintended by the clergy. 
In every civilized state the expensive machinery 
of the Church has been set up and placed in the 
hands of men of dignity, because it has been be- 
lieved that by no other engine can we so effect- 
ively render people upright. I still believe this, 
and I am pretty confident that a good many years 
will pass before we shall dispense with the en- 
nobling services of our ministers. And yet it is 
plain that much of the work which formerly was 
exclusively theirs is so no longer. Much of it is 
performed by books, newspapers, and facilitated 
human intercourse. Ministers do not now speak 
with their old authority ; they speak merely as 
other men speak ; and we are all asking whether 
in the immense readjustment of faith now going 
on something of their peculiar power of moral 
as well as of intellectual guidance may not slip 
away. 

The home too, which has hitherto been the 
fundamental agency for fostering morality in the 
young, is just now in sore need of repair. We can 
no longer depend upon it alone for moral guard- 

3 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

ianship. It must be supplemented, possibly re- 
constructed. New dangers to it have arisen. In 
the complex civilization of city life, in the huge 
influx of untutored foreigners, in the substitution 
of the apartment for the house, in the greater 
ease of divorce, in the larger freedom now given 
to children, to women, in the breaking down of 
class distinctions and the readier accessibility of 
man to man, there are perils for boy and girl 
which did not exist before. And while these 
changes in the outward form of domestic life are 
advancing, certain protections against moral peril 
which the home formerly afforded have decayed. 
It would be curious to ascertain in how many 
families of our immediate time daily prayers are 
used, and to compare the number with that of 
those in which the holy practice was common 
fifty years ago. It would be interesting to know 
how frequently parents to-day converse with their 
children on subjects serious, pious, or personal. 
The hurry of modern life has swept away many 
uplifting intimacies. Even in families which prize 
them most, a few minutes only can be had each 
day for such fortifying things. Domestic training 

4 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

has shrunk, while the training of haphazard com- 
panions, the training of the streets, the training 
of the newspapers, have acquired a potency hith- 
erto unknown. 

It is no wonder, then, that in such a moral cri- 
sis the community turns to that agency whose 
power is already felt beneficently in a multitude 
of other directions, the school. The cry comes to 
us teachers, " We established you at first to make 
our children wiser ; we want you now for a pro- 
founder service. Can you not unite moral culture 
with intellectual } " It may be ; though discipline 
of the passions is enormously more difficult than 
discipline of the mind. But at any rate we must 
acknowledge that our success in the mental field 
is largely staked on our success in the moral. 
Our pupils will not learn their lessons in arith- 
metic if they have not already made some pro- 
gress in concentration, in self-forgetfulness, in 
acceptance of duty. Nor can we touch them in a 
single section of their nature and hope for results. 
Instruction must go all through. We are obliged 
to treat each little human being as a whole if 
we would have our treatment wholesome. And 

5 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

then, too, we have had such successes elsewhere 
that we may well feel emboldened for the new 
task. Nearly the whole of life is now advanta- 
geously surveyed in one form or another in our 
schools and colleges ; and we have usually found 
that advance in instruction develops swiftly into 
betterment of practice. We teach, for example, 
social science and analyze the customs of the 
past ; but soon we find bands of young men and 
women in all the important cities criticising the 
government of those cities, suggesting better 
modes of voting, wiser forms of charity ; and be- 
fore we know it the community is transformed. 
We cannot teach the science of electricity with- 
out improving our street-cars, or at least without 
raising hopes that they may some day be im- 
proved. Each science claims its brother art. 
Theory creeps over into action. It will not stay 
by itself; it is pervasive, diffusive. And as this 
pervasive character of knowledge in the lower 
ranges is perceived, we teachers are urged to 
press forward its operation in the higher also. 
Why have we no school-books on human charac- 
ter, the highest of all themes ? Once direct the 

6 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

attention of our pupils to this great topic, and 
may we not ultimately bring about that moral 
enlargement for which the time waits ? 

I have stated somewhat at length the considera- 
tions in behalf of ethical instruction in the schools 
because those considerations on the whole appear 
to me illusory. I cannot believe such instruction 
feasible. Were it so, of course it would have my 
eager support. But I see in it grave difficulties, 
difficulties imperfectly understood; and a diffi- 
culty disregarded becomes a danger, possibly a 
catastrophe. Let me explain in a few words 
where the danger lies. 

Between morals and ethics there is a sharp dis- 
tinction, frequently as the two words are confused. 
Usage, however, shows the meaning. If I call a 
man a man of bad morals, I evidently mean to as- 
sert that his conduct is corrupt ; he does things 
which the majority of mankind believe he ought 
not to do. It is his practice I denounce, not his 
intellectual formulation. In the same way we 
speak of the petty morals of society, referring in 
the phrase to the small practices of mankind, the 
unnumbered actions which disclose good or bad 

7 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

principles unconsciously hidden within. It is en- 
tirely different when I call a man's ethics bad. I 
then declare that I do not agree with his compre- 
hension of moral principles. His practice may be 
entirely correct. I do not speak of that; it is his 
understanding that is at fault. For ethics, as was 
long ago remarked, is related to morals as geo- 
metry to carpentry : the one is a science, the other 
its practical embodiment. In the former, con- 
sciousness is a prime factor; from the latter it 
often is absent altogether. 

Now what is asked of us teachers is that we 
invite our pupils to direct study of the principles 
of right conduct, that we awaken their conscious- 
ness about their modes of life, and so by degrees 
impart to them a science of righteousness. This 
is theory, ethics; not morals, practice; and in 
my judgment it is dangerous business, with the 
slenderest chance of success. Useless is it to say 
that the aim of such instruction need not be eth- 
ical, but moral. Whatever the ultimate aim, the 
procedure of instruction is of necessity scientific. 
It operates through intelligence, and only gets into 
life so far as the instructed intelligence afterward 

8 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

becomes a director. This is the work of books and 
teachers everywhere : they discipline the knowing 
act, and so bring within its influence that multi- 
tude of matters which depend for excellent ad- 
justment on clear and ordered knowledge. Such 
a work, however, is evidently but partial. Many 
matters do not take their rise in knowledge at all. 
Morality does not. The boy as soon as born is 
adopted unconsciously into some sort of moral 
world. While he is growing up and is thinking 
of other things, habits of character are seizing 
him. By the time he comes to school he is in- 
crusted with customs. The idea that his moral 
education can be fashioned by his teacher in the 
same way as his education in geography is fantas- 
tic. It is only his ethical training which may now 
begin. The attention of such a boy may be called 
to habits already formed; he may be led to dissect 
those habits, to pass judgment on them as right 
or wrong, and to inquire why and how they may 
be bettered. This is the only power teaching 
professes : it critically inquires, it awakens inter- 
est, it inspects facts, it discovers laws. And this 
process applied in the field of character yields 

9 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

ethics, the systematized knowledge of human con- 
duct. It does not primarily yield morals, improved 
performance. 

Nor indeed is performance likely to be im- 
proved by ethical enlightenment if, as I maintain, 
the whole business of self-criticism in the child is 
unwholesome. By a course of ethical training a 
young person will, in my view, much more prob- 
ably become demoralized than invigorated. What 
we ought to desire, if we would have a boy grow 
morally sturdy, is that introspection should not 
set in early and that he should not become ac- 
customed to watch his conduct. And the reason 
is obvious. Much as we incline to laud our pre- 
rogative of consciousness and to assert that it is 
precisely what distinguishes us from our poor 
relations, the brutes, we still must acknowledge 
that consciousness has certain grave defects when 
exalted into the position of a guide. Large tracts 
of life lie altogether beyond its control, and the 
conduct which can be affected by it is apt — es- 
pecially in the initial stages — to be rendered 
vague, slow, vacillating, and distorted. Only in- 
stinctive action is swift, sure, and firm. For this 

10 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

reason we distrust the man who calculates his 
goodness. We find him vulgar and repellent. We 
are far from sure that he will keep that goodness 
long. If I offer to shake hands with a man with 
precisely that degree of warmth which I have 
decided it is well to express, will he willingly take 
my hand.^ A few years ago there were some non- 
sense verses on this subject going the rounds of 
the English newspapers. They seemed to me 
capitally to express the morbid influence of con- 
sciousness in a complex organism. They ran some- 
what as follows : — 

The centipede was happy, quite, 

Until the toad for fun 
Said, " Pray which leg comes after which ? *' 
This worked her mind to such a pitch 
She lay distracted in a ditch, 

Considering how to run. 

And well she might ! Imagine the hundred legs 
steered consciously — now it is time to move this 
one, now to move that ! The creature would never 
move at all, but would be as incapable of action 
as Hamlet himself. And are the young less com- 

II 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

plex than centipedes ? Shall their little lives be 
suddenly turned over to a fumbling guide ? Shall 
they not rather be stimulated to unconscious rec- 
titude, gently led into those blind but holy habits 
which make goodness easy, and so be saved from 
the perilous perplexities of marking out their own 
way ? So thought the sagacious Aristotle. To the 
crude early opinion of Socrates that virtue is 
knowledge, he opposed the ripened doctrine that 
it is practice and habit. 

This, then, is the inexpugnable objection to 
the ethical instruction of children : the end which 
should be sought is performance, not Tknowledge, 
and we cannot by supplying the latter induce the 
former. But do not these considerations cut the 
ground from under practical teaching of every 
kind.!* Instruction is given in other subjects in 
the hope that it may finally issue in strengthened 
action, and I have acknowledged that as a fact 
this hope is repeatedly justified. Why may not 
a similar result appear in ethics ? What puts a 
difference between that study and electricity, 
social science, or manual training } This : accord- 
ing as the work studied includes a creative ele- 

12 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

ment and is intended to give expression to a per- 
sonal life, consciousness becomes an increasingly 
dangerous dependence. Why are there no classes 
and text-books for the study of deportment ? Is 
it because manners are unimportant? No, but 
because they make the man, and to be of any 
worth must be an expression of his very nature. 
Conscious study would tend to distort rather than 
to fashion them. Their practice cannot be learned 
in the same way as carpentry. 

But an analogy more enlightening for showing 
the inaptitude of the child for direct study of the 
laws of conduct is found in the case of speech. 
Between speech and morals the analogies are 
subtle and wide. So minute are they that speech 
might almost be called a kind of vocal morality. 
Like morality, it is something possessed long be- 
fore we are aware of it, and it becomes perfect 
or debased with our growth. We employ it to 
express ourselves and to come into ordered con- 
tact with our neighbor. By it we confer benefits, 
and by it receive benefits in turn. Rigid as are 
its laws, we still feel ourselves free in its use, 
though obliged to give to our spontaneous feel- 

13 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

ings forms constructed by men of the past. Ease, 
accuracy, and scope are here confessedly of vast 
consequence. It has consequently been found a 
matter of extreme difficulty to bring a young 
person's attention helpfully to bear upon his 
speech. Indirect methods seem to be the only 
profitable ones. Philology, grammar, rhetoric, 
systematic study of the laws of language, are 
dangerous tools for a boy below his teens. The 
child who is to acquire excellent speech must be 
encouraged to keep attention away from the 
words he uses and to fix it upon that which he 
is to express. Abstract grammar will either con- 
found the tongue which it should ease, or else it 
will seem to have no connection with living re- 
ality, but to be an ingenious contrivance invented 
by some Dry-as-dust for the torture of school- 
boys. 

And a similar pair of dangers await the young 
student of the laws of conduct. On the one hand, 
it is highly probable that he will not understand 
what his teacher is talking about. He may learn 
his lesson ; he may answer questions correctly ; 
but he will assume that these things have no- 

14 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

thing to do with him. He becomes dulled to moral 
distinctions, and it is the teaching of ethics that 
dulls him. We see the disastrous process in full 
operation in a neighboring field. There are coun- 
tries which have regular public instruction in 
religion. The argument runs that schools are es- 
tablished to teach what is of consequence to citi- 
zens, and religion is of more consequence than 
anything else. Therefore introduce it, is the con- 
clusion. Therefore keep it out, is the sound con- 
clusion. It lies too near the life to be announced 
in official propositions and still to retain a recog- 
nizable meaning. I have known a large number 
of German young men. I have yet to meet one 
whose religious nature has been deepened by his 
instruction in school. And the lack of influence 
is noticeable not merely in those who have failed 
in the study, but quite as much in those who 
have ranked highest. In neither case has the au- 
gust discipline meant anything. The danger would 
be wider, the disaster from the benumbing influ- 
ence more serious, if ethical instruction should be 
organized ; wider, because morality underlies re- 
ligion, and insensitiveness to the moral claim is 

15 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

more immediately and concretely destructive. 
Yet here, as in the case of religion, of manners, 
or of speech, the child will probably take to heart 
very little of what is said. At most he will assume 
that the text-book statement of the rules of right- 
eousness represents the way in which the game of 
life is played by some people ; but he will prefer 
to play it in his own way still. Young people are 
constructed with happy protective arrangements ; 
they are enviably impervious. So in expounding 
moral principles in the schoolroom, I believe we 
shall touch the child in very few moral spots. 
Nevertheless, he becomes dulled and hardened if 
he listens long to sacred words untouched. 

But the benumbing influence is not the gravest 
danger ; analogies of speech suggest a graver still. 
If we try to teach speech too early and really 
succeed in fixing the child's attention upon his 
tongue, we enfeeble his power of utterance. Con- 
sciousness once awakened, the child is perpetually 
inquiring whether the word is the right word, 
and suspecting that it is not quite sufficiently 
right to be allowed free passage. Just so a mo- 
mentous trouble appears when the moral con- 

i6 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

sciousness has been too early stirred. That self- 
questioning spirit springs up which impels its 
tortured possessor to be continually fingering his 
motives in unwholesome preoccupation with him- 
self. Instead of entering heartily into outward in- 
terests, the watchful little moralist is " question- 
ing about himself whether he has been as good as 
he should have been, and whether a better man 
would not have acted otherwise." No part of us 
is more susceptible of morbidness than the moral 
sense ; none demoralizes more thoroughly when 
morbid. The trouble, too, affects chiefly those 
of finer fibre. The majority of healthy children, 
as has been said, harden themselves against the- 
oretic talk, and it passes over them like the wind. 
Here and there a sensitive soul absorbs the poison 
and sets itself seriously to work installing duty as 
the mainspring of its life. We all know the un- 
wholesome result : the person from whom spon- 
taneity is gone, who criticises everything he does, 
who has lost his sense of proportion, who teases 
himself endlessly and teases his friends — so far 
as they remain his friends — about the right and 
wrong of each petty act. It is a disease, a moral 

17 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

disease, and takes the place in the spiritual life 
of that which the doctors are fond of calling 
" nervous prostration " in the physical. Few coun- 
tries have been so desolated by it as New Eng- 
land. It is our special scourge. Many here carry 
a conscience about with them which makes us 
say, " How much better off they would be with 
none ! " I declare, at times when I see the 
ravages which conscientiousness works in our 
New England stock, I wish these New England- 
ers had never heard moral distinctions mentioned. 
Better their vices than their virtues. The wise 
teacher will extirpate the first sproutings of the 
weed ; for a weed more difficult to extirpate when 
grown there is not. We run a serious risk of im- 
planting it in our children when we undertake 
their class instruction in ethics. 

Such, then, are some of the considerations 
which should. give us pause when the public is 
clamoring at our schoolhouse doors and saying 
to us teachers, " We cannot bring up our children 
so as to make them righteous citizens. Undertake 
the work for us. You have done so much already 
that we turn to you again and entreat your help." 

i8 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

I think we must sadly reply, "There are limits 
to what we can do. If you respect us, you will 
not urge us to do the thing that is not ours. By 
pressing into certain regions we shall bring upon 
you more disaster than benefit." 

Fully, however, as the dangers here pointed 
out may be acknowledged, much of a different 
sort remains also true. Have we not ail received 
a large measure of moral culture at school ? And 
are we quite content to say that the greatest of 
subjects is unteachable .'* I would not say this; on 
the contrary, I hold that no college is properly 
organized where the teaching of ethics does not 
occupy a position of honor. The college, not the 
school, is the place for the study. It would be 
absurd to maintain that all other subjects of study 
are nutritious to man except that of his own na- 
ture ; but it is far from absurd to ask that a young 
man first possess a nature before he undertakes 
to analyze it. A study useless for developing in- 
itial power may still be highly profitable for doc- 
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
in righteousness. Youth should be spontaneous, 
instinctive, ebullient ; reflection whispers to the 

19 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

growing man. Many of the evils that I have thus 
far traced are brought about by projecting upon 
a young mind problems which it has not yet en- 
countered in itself. Such problems abound in the 
later teens and in the twenties, and then is the 
time to set about their discussion. 

But even in college I would have ethical study 
more guarded than the rest. Had I the power, I 
would never allow it to be required of all. It 
should be offered only as an elective and in the 
later years of the course. When I entered college 
I was put in my freshman year into a prescribed 
study of this sort. Happily I received no influ- 
ence from it whatever. It passed over and left 
me untouched ; and I think it had no more effect 
on the majority of my classmates. Possibly some 
of the more reflective took it to heart and were 
harmed ; but, in general, it was a mere wasting of 
precious ointment which might have soothed our 
wounds if elected in the senior year. Of course 
great teachers defy all rules ; and under a Hop- 
kins, a Garman, or a Hyde, the distinctions of 
elective and prescribed become unimportant. Yet 
the principle is clear : wait till the young man is 

20 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

confronted with the problems before you invite 
him to their solution. Has he grown up unques- 
tioning ? Has he accepted the moral code in- 
herited from honored parents? Can he rest in 
wise habits ? Then let him be thankful and go his 
way untaught. But has he, on the other hand, 
felt that the moral mechanism by which he was 
early guided does not fit all cases ? Has he found 
one class of duties in conflict with another ? Has 
he discovered that the moral standards obtaining 
in different sections of society, in different parts 
of the world, are irreconcilable ? In short, is he 
puzzled and desirous of working his way through 
his puzzles, of facing them and tracking them to 
their beginnings ? Then is he ripe for the study 
of ethics. 

Yet when it is so undertaken, when those only 
are invited to partake of it who in their own hearts 
have heard its painful call, even then I would hedge 
it about with two conditions. First, it should be 
pursued as a science, critically, and the student 
should be informed at the outset that the aim of 
the course is knowledge, not the endeavor to make 
better men. And, secondly, I would insist that the 

21 



ETHICAL INSTRUCTION 

students themselves do the work; that they do not 
passively listen to opinions set forth by their in- 
structor, but that they address themselves to re- 
search and learn to construct moral judgments 
which will bear critical inspection. Some teachers, 
no doubt, will think it wisest to accomplish these 
things by tracing the course of ethics in the past, 
treating it as a historical science. Others will pre- 
fer, by announcing their own beliefs, to stimulate 
their students to criticise those beliefs and to ven- 
ture on their own little constructions. The method 
is unimportant; it is only of consequence that the 
students themselves do the ethicising, that they 
trace the logic of their own beliefs and do not 
rest in dogmatic statement. Yet such an under- 
taking may well sober a teacher. I never see my 
class in ethics come to their first lecture that I 
do not tremble and say to myself that I am set 
for the downfall of some of them. In every such 
studious company there must be unprepared per- 
sons whom the teacher will damage. He cannot 
help it. He must move calmly forward, confident 
in his subject, but knowing that because it is liv- 
ing it is dangerous. 

22 



MORAL INSTRUCTION IN 
THE SCHOOLS 



II 

MORAL INSTRUCTION IN 
THE SCHOOLS 

The preceding paper has discussed sufficiently 
the negative side of moral education. It has shown 
how children should not be approached. But few 
readers will be willing to leave the matter here. 
Are there no positive measures to be taken ? Is 
there no room in our schools for any teaching of 
morality, or must the most important of subjects 
be altogether banished from their doors ? There 
is much which might lead us to think so. If a 
teacher may not instruct his pupils in morality, 
what other concern with it he should have is not 
at once apparent. One may even suspect that at- 
tention to it will distract him from his proper work. 
Every human undertaking has some central aim 
and succeeds by loyalty to it. Each profession, 
for example, singles out one of our many needs 
and to this devotes itself whole-heartedly. Such 

25 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

a restriction is wise. No profession could be strong 
which attempted to meet the requirements of man 
as a whole. The physician accordingly selects his 
little aim of extirpating suffering and disease. His 
studies, his occupation, his aptitudes, his hopes 
of gain, his dignity as a public character, all have 
reference to this. Whatever is incompatible with 
it, of however great worth in itself, is rightly 
ignored. To save the soul of a patient may be of 
larger consequence than to invigorate his body. 
But the faithful physician attends to spiritual 
matters only so far as he thinks them conducive 
to bodily health. Or again the painter, because 
he is setting ocular beauty before us, concerns 
himself with harmonies of color, balance of masses, 
rhythms of line, rather than with history, anec- 
dote, or incitements to noble living. I once heard 
a painter say, " There is religion enough for me 
in seeing how half-a-dozen figures can be made 
to go together," and I honored him for the say- 
ing. So, too, I should hold that the proper aim of 
the merchant is money-making, and that only so 
much of charity or public usefulness can fairly be 
demanded of him as does not conflict with his 

26 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

profits. It is true that there are large ways and 
petty ways of acquiring gain, and one's own ad- 
vantage cannot for long be separated from that 
of others. Still, the merchant rightly desists from 
any course which he finds in the long run com- 
mercially unprofitable. 

What, then, is the central aim of teaching } Con- 
fessedly it is the impartation of knowledge. What- 
ever furthers this should be eagerly pursued ; and 
all that hinders it, rejected. When schoolmasters 
understand their business it will be useless for 
the public to call to them, " We want our children 
to be patriotic. Drop for a time your multiplica- 
tion table while you rouse enthusiasm for the old 
flag." They would properly reply, " We are ready 
to teach American history. As a part of human 
knowledge, it belongs to our province. But though 
the politicians fail to stir patriotism, do not put 
their neglected work upon us. We have more than 
we can attend to already." 

Now in my previous paper I showed how a theo- 
retic knowledge of good conduct had better not be 
given to children. By exposition of holy laws they 
are not nourished, but enfeebled. What they need 

27 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

is right habits, not an understanding of them : to 
become good persons rather than to acquire a criti- 
cal acquaintance with goodness. What moral func- 
tion then remains for the schools ? To furnish a 
knowledge of morality has been proved danger- 
ous. For teachers to turn away from imparting 
knowledge and devote their scanty time to fash- 
ioning character is to abandon work which they 
alone are fitted to perform. Yet to let them send 
forth boys and girls alert in mind and loose in char- 
acter is something which no community will long 
endure. 

Until one has clearly faced these alternative 
perplexities he is in no condition to advise about 
grafting morality into a school curriculum ; for 
until then he will be pretty sure to be misled by 
the popular notion of morality as a thing apart, 
demanding separate study, a topic like geography 
or English literature. But the morality nutritious 
for school-children is nothing of this kind. No ad- 
ditional hour need be provided for its teaching. 
In teaching anything, we teach it. A false an- 
tithesis was therefore set up just now when we 
suggested that a teacher's business was to impart 

28 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

knowledge rather than to fashion character. He 
cannot do the one without the other. Let him be 
altogether true to his scientific aims and refuse 
to accommodate them to anything else; he will be 
all the better teacher of morality. Carlyle tells of 
a carpenter who broke all the ten commandments 
with every stroke of his hammer. A scholar breaks 
or keeps them with every lesson learned. So con- 
ditioned on morality is the process of knowing, 
so inwrought is it in the very structure of the 
school, that a school might well be called an ethi- 
cal instrument and its daily sessions hours for the 
manufacture of character. Only the species of 
character manufactured will largely depend on the 
teacher's acquaintance with the instrument he is 
using. To increase that acquaintance and give 
greater deftness in the use of so exquisite an in- 
strument is the object of this paper. Once mas- 
tered, the tools of his own trade will be more prized 
by the earnest teacher than any additional hand- 
book of ethics. 

It will be easiest to point out the kind of moral 
instruction a school is fitted to give, if we dis- 
tinguish with somewhat exaggerated sharpness 

29 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

its several lines of activity. A school is primarily 
a place of learning; it is unavoidably a social unit, 
and it is incidentally a dependent fellowship. No 
one of these aspects is ever absent from it. Each 
affords its own opportunity for moral training. 
The combination of them gives a school its power. 
Yet each is so detachable that it may well become 
the subject of independent study. 

I. A school is primarily a place of learning, 
and to this purpose all else in it is rightfully 
subordinated. But learning is itself an act, and 
one more dependent than most on moral guid- 
ance. It occurs, too, at a period of life whose 
chief business is the transformation of a thing 
of nature into a spiritual being. Several stages 
in this spiritual transformation through which 
the process of learning takes us I will point out. 

A school generally gives a child his first ac- 
quaintance with an authoritatively organized 
world and reveals his dependence upon it. By 
nature, impulses and appetites rule him. A child 
is charmingly self-centred. The world and all its 
ordered goings he notices merely as ministering 
to his desires. Nothing but what he wishes, and 

30 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

wishes just now, is important. He relates all this 
but little to the wishes of other people, to the 
inherent fixities of things, to his own future states, 
to whether one wish is compatible with another. 
His immediate mood is everything. Of any dif- 
ference between what is whimsical or momentary 
and what is rational or permanent he is oblivious. 
To him dreams and fancies are as substantial as 
stars, hills, or moving creatures. He has, in short, 
BO idea of law nor any standards of reality. 

Now it is the first business of instruction to 
impart such ideas and standards ; but no less is 
this a work of moralization. The two accordingly 
go on together. Whether we call the chaotic 
conditions of nature in which we begin life ig- 
norance or deficient morality, it is equally the 
work of education to abolish them. Both educa- 
tion and morality set themselves to rationalize 
the moody, lawless, transient, isolated, self-as- 
sertive, and impatient aspects of things, intro- 
ducing the wondering scholar to the inherent 
necessities which surround him. *^ Schoolmas- 
ters," says George Herbert, "deliver us to laws." 
And probably most of us make our earliest ac- 

31 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

quaintancewith these impalpable and controlling 
entities when we take our places in the school. 
There our primary lesson is submission. We are 
bidden to put away personal likings and see how 
in themselves things really are. Eight times nine 
does not permit itself to be seventy-three or 
sixty-four, but exactly and forever seventy-two. 
Cincinnati lies obstinately on the Ohio, not on 
the Mississippi, and it is nonsense to speak of 
Daniel Webster as a President of the United 
States. The agreement of verbs and nouns, the 
reactions of chemical elements were, it seems, 
settled some time before we appeared. They pay 
little attention to our humors. We must accept 
an already constituted world and adjust our little 
self to its august realities. Of course the process 
is not completed at school. Begun there, it con- 
tinues throughout life ; its extent, tenacity, and 
instantaneous application marking the degree 
which we reach in scientific and moral culture. 
Let a teacher attempt to lighten the task of 
himself or his pupil by accepting an inexact 
observation, a slipshod remembrance, a careless 
statement, or a distorted truth, and he will cor- 

32 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

rupt the child's character no less than his intel- 
ligence. He confirms the child's habit of intrud- 
ing himself into reality and of remaining listless 
when ordained facts are calling. Education may 
well be defined as the banishment of moods at 
the bidding of the permanently real. 

But to acquire such obedient alertness persist- 
ence is necessary, and in gaining it a child wins 
a second victory over disorderly nature. By this 
he becomes acquainted not merely with an outer 
world, but with a still stranger object, himself. 
I have spoken already of the eagerness of young 
desires. They are blind and disruptive things. 
One of them pays small heed to another, but 
each blocks the other's way, preventing anything 
like a coherent and united life. A child is noto- 
riously a creature of the moment, looking little 
before and after. He must be taught to do so 
before he can know anything or be anybody. A 
school matures him by connecting his doings of 
to-day with those of to-morrow. Here he begins 
to estimate the worth of the present by noticing 
what it contributes to an organic plan. Each 
hour of study brings precious discipline in pre- 

33 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

ferring what is distantly important to what is 
momentarily agreeable. A personal being, in some 
degree emancipated from time, consequently 
emerges, and a selfhood appears, built up through 
enduring interests. The whole process is in the 
teacher's charge. It is his to enforce diligence 
and so to assist the vague little life to knit itself 
solidly together. 

Nor should it be forgotten that to become each 
day the possessor of increasing stores of novel 
and interesting truths normally brings dignity 
and pleasure. This honorable delight reacts, too, 
on the process of learning, quickening its pace, 
sharpening its observation, and confirming its 
persistence. It is of no less importance for the 
character, to which it imparts ease, courage, 
beauty, and resourcefulness. But on the teacher 
it will depend whether such pleasure is found. 
A teacher who has entered deeply into his sub- 
ject, and is not afraid of allowing enthusiasm to 
appear, will make the densest subject and the 
densest pupil glow ; while a dull teacher can in a 
few minutes strip the most engrossing subject of 
interest and make the diligence exacted in its 

34 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

pursuit deadening. It is dangerous to dissociate 
toil and delight. The school is the place to initiate 
their genial union. Whoever learns there to love 
knowledge, will be pretty secure of becoming an 
educated and useful man and of finding satisfac- 
tion in whatever employment may afterwards be 
his. 

One more contribution to character which 
comes from the school as a place of learning I 
will mention : it should create a sense of freedom. 
Without this both learning and the learner are 
distorted. It is not enough that the child become 
submissive to an already constituted world, obe- 
dient to its authoritative organization ; not enough 
that he find pleasure in it, or even discover him- 
self emerging, as one day's diligence is bound up 
with that of another. All these influences may 
easily make him think of himself as a passive 
creature, and consequently leave him half formed. 
There is something more. Rightly does the Psalm- 
ist call the fear of the Lord the beginning of 
wisdom rather than its end ; for that education 
is defective which fashions a docile and slavish 
learner. As the child introduces order into his 

35 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

previously capricious acts, thoughts, and feelings, 
he should feel in himself a power of control un- 
known before, and be encouraged to find an 
honorable use for his very peculiarities. He should 
be brought to see that the world is unfinished 
and needs his joyful cooperation, that it has room 
for individual activity and admits rationally con- 
structed purposes. From his earliest years a child 
should be encouraged to criticise, to have prefer- 
ences, and to busy himself with imaginative con- 
structions ; for all this development of orderly 
freedom and of rejoicing in its exercise is build- 
ing up at once both knowledge and character. 

II. Yet a school becomes an ethical instrument 
not merely through being a place of learning, but 
because it is also a social unit. It is a cooperative 
group, or company of persons pledged every in- 
stant to consider one another, their common pur- 
pose being jarred by the obtrusion of any one's 
dissenting will. Accordingly much that is proper 
elsewhere becomes improper here. As soon as a 
child enters a schoolroom he is impressed by the 
unaccustomed silence. A happy idea springs in 
his mind and clamors for the same outgo it would 

36 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

have at home, but it is restrained in deference 
to the assembled company. In crossing the room 
he is taught to tread lightly, though for himself 
a joyous dash might be agreeable ; but might it 
not distract the attention of those who are study- 
ing ? The school begins at nine o'clock and each 
recitation at its fixed hour, these times being no 
better than others except as facilitating common 
corporate action. To this each one's private ways 
become adjusted. The subordination of each to 
all is written large on every arrangement of school 
life ; and it needs must be so if there is to be 
moral advance. For morality itself is nothing but 
the acceptance of such habits as express the help- 
ful relations of society and the individual. Punc- 
tuality, order, quiet, are signs that the child's life 
is beginning to be socialized. A teacher who fails 
to impress their elementary righteousness on his 
pupils brutalizes every child in his charge. 

Such relations between the social whole and 
the part assume a variety of forms, and the school 
is the best place for introducing a child to their 
niceties. Those other persons whom a school-boy 
is called on continually to regard may be either 

37 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

his superiors, equals, or inferiors. To each we 
have specific duties, expressed in an appropriate 
type of manners. Our teachers are above us, — 
above us in age, experience, wisdom, and author- 
ity. To treat them as comrades is unseemly. 
Confession of their superiority colors all our 
approaches. They are to be listened to as others 
are not. Their will has the right of way. Our 
bearing toward them, however trustful or even 
affectionate, shows a respectfulness somewhat re- 
moved from familiarity. On the other hand, school- 
mates are comrades, at least those of the same 
sex, class, strength, and intelligence. Among 
them we assert ourselves freely, yet with constant 
care to secure no less freedom for them, and 
we guard them against any damage or annoyance 
which our hasty assertiveness might cause. In 
case of clash between their interest and our own, 
ours is withdrawn. And then toward those who 
are below us, either in rank or powers, helpful- 
ness springs forth. We are eager to bridge over 
the separating chasm and by our will to abolish 
hindering defects. These three types of personal 
adjustment — respect, courtesy, and helpfulness, 

38 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

with their wide variety of combination — form 
the groundwork of all good manners. In their 
beginnings they need prompting and oversight 
from some one who is already mature. A school 
which neglects to cultivate them works almost 
irreparable injury to its pupils. For if these pos- 
sibilities of refined human intercourse are not 
opened in the school years, it is with great diffi- 
culty they are arrived at afterwards. 

The spiritualizing influence of the school as a 
social unit is, however, not confined to the class- 
room. It is quite as active on the playground. 
There a boy learns to play fair, accustoms him- 
self to that greatest of social ties, V esprit du 
corps. Throughout life a man needs continually 
to merge his own interests in those of a group. 
He must act as the father of a family, an opera- 
tive in a factory, a voter of Boston, an American 
citizen, a member of an engine company, union, 
church, or business firm. His own small concerns 
are taken up into these larger ones, and devotion 
to them is not felt as self-sacrifice. A preparation 
for such moral ennoblement is laid in the sports 
of childhood. What does a member of the foot- 

39 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

ball team care for battered shins or earth-scraped 
hands ? His side has won, and his own gains and 
losses are forgotten. Soon his team goes forth 
against an outside team, and now the honor of 
the whole school is in his keeping. What pride 
is his ! As he puts on his uniform, he strips off 
his isolated personality and stands forth as the 
trusted champion of an institution. Nor does this 
august supersession of the private consciousness 
by the public arise in connection with sports alone. 
As a member of the school, a boy acts differently 
from what he otherwise would. There is a stand- 
ard of conduct recognized as suitable for a Wash- 
ington School boy, and from it his own does not 
widely depart. For good or for ill each school 
has its ideals of "good form " which are compul- 
sive over its members, and are handed on from 
class to class. To assist in moulding, refining, 
and maintaining these is the weightiest work 
of a schoolmaster. For these ideals have about 
them the sacredness of what is traditional, 
institutional, and are of an unseen, august, and 
penetrative power, comparable to nothing else 
in character-formation. To modify them ever 

40 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

so slightly a teacher should be content to work 
for years. 

III. A third aspect of the school I have called 
its character as a Dependent Fellowship, and I 
have said that this is merely incidental. A highly 
important incident it is, however, and one that 
never fails to recur. What I would indicate by 
the dark phrase is this : in every school an imper- 
fect life is associated with one similar but more 
advanced, one from which it perpetually re- 
ceives influences that are not official nor meas- 
urable in money payment. A teacher is hired 
primarily to teach, and with a view also to his 
ability to keep order throughout his little society 
and to make his authority respected there. But 
side by side with these public duties runs the 
expression of his personality. This is his own, 
something which he hides or discloses at his 
pleasure. To his pupils, however, he must always 
appear in the threefold character of teacher, 
master, and developed human being ; while they 
correspondingly present themselves to him as 
pupils, members of the school, and elementary 
human beings. Of these pairs of relationships 

41 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

two are contrasted and supplemental, — teacher 
and pupil, master and scholar, having nothing 
in common, each being precisely what the other 
is not. As human beings, however, pupil and 
teacher are akin and removed from one another 
merely by the degree of progression made by the 
elder along a common path. Here, then, the rela- 
tion is one of fellowship, but a fellowship where 
the younger is largely dependent on the older 
for an understanding of what he should be. By 
example, friendship, and personal influence a 
teacher is certain to affect for good or ill every 
member of his school. In any account of the 
school as an ethical instrument this subtlest of 
its moral agencies deserves careful analysis. 

There are different sorts of example. I may 
observe how the shopman does up a package, and 
do one so myself the next morning. A companion 
may have a special inflection of voice, which I 
may catch. I may be drawn to industry by see- 
ing how steadily my classmate studies. I may 
adopt a phrase, a smile, or a polite gesture, which 
was originally my teacher's. All these are cases 
of direct imitation. Some one possesses a trait 

42 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

or an act which is passed over entire to another 
person, by whom it is substituted for one of his 
own. Though the adoption of such alien ways is 
dangerous, society could hardly go on without it. 
It is its mode of transmitting what is supposed to 
be already tested and of lodging it in the lives 
of persons of less experience, with the least cost 
to the receivers. Most teachers will have habits 
which their pupils may advantageously copy. 
Yet supposing the imitated ways altogether 
good, which they seldom are, direct imitation is 
questionable as disregarding the particular char- 
acter of him in whom the ways are found and in 
assuming that they will be equally appropriate 
if engrafted on anybody. But this is far from 
true, and consequently he who imitates much is, 
or soon will be, a weakling. On the whole, a 
teacher needs to guard his pupils against his imi- 
table peculiarities. If sensible, he will snub who- 
ever is disposed to repeat them. 

Still, there is a noble sort of imitation, and 
that school is a poor place where it does not go 
on. Certain persons have a strange power of in- 
vigorating us by their presence. When with 

43 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

them, we can do what seems impossible alone. 
They are our examples rather as wholes, and in 
their strength and spirit, than in their single 
traits or acts ; and so whatever is most distinctive 
of ourselves becomes renewed through contact 
with them. It was said of the late Dr. Jowett that 
he sent out more pupils who were widely unlike 
himself than any Oxford teacher of his time. 
That is enviable praise ; for the wholesomeness 
of example is tested by inquiring whether it de- 
velops differences or has only the power of du- 
plicating the original. Every teacher knows how 
easy it is to send out cheap editions of himself, 
and in his weaker moments he inclines to issue 
them. But it is ignoble business. Our manners 
and tones and phrases and the ways we have of 
doing this and that are after all valuable only as 
expressions of ourselves. For anybody else they 
are rubbish. What we should like to impart is 
that earnestness, accuracy, unselfishness, can- 
dor, reverence for God's laws, and sturdiness 
through hardship, toward which we aspire, — - 
matters in reality only half ours and which spring 
up with fresh and griginal beauty in every soul 

44 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

where they once take root. The Dependent Fel- 
lowship of a school makes these larger, enkin- 
dling, and diversifying influences peculiarly pos- 
sible. It should be a teacher's highest ambition 
to exercise them. And though we might natu- 
rally expect that such inspiring teachers would be 
rare, I seldom enter a school without finding in- 
dications of the presence of at least one of them. 
But for those who would acquire this larger 
influence a strange caution is necessary : Exam- 
ples do not work that are not real. We sometimes 
try to *'set an example," that is, to put on a type 
of character for the benefit of a beholder ; and 
are usually disappointed. Personal influence is 
not an affair of acting, but of being. Those about 
us are strangely affected by what we veritably 
are, only slightly by what we would have them 
see. If we are indisposed to study, yet, knowing 
that industry is good for our scholars, assume a 
bustling diligence, they are more likely to feel 
the real portion of the affair, our laziness, than 
the activity which was designed for their copying. 
Astonishingly shrewd are the young at scenting 
humbug and being unaffected by its pretensions. 

45 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

There is consequently no method to be learned 
for gaining personal influence. Almost every- 
thing else requires plan and effort. This precious 
power needs little attention. It will not come in 
one way better than another. A fair measure of 
sympathetic tact is useful for starting it ; but in 
the long run persons rude and suave, talkative 
and silent, handsome and ugly, stalwart and 
slight, possess it in about equal degree, the very 
characteristics which we should be disposed to 
count disadvantageous often seeming to confirm 
its hold. Since it generally comes about that our 
individual interests become in some measure 
those of our pupils too, the only safe rule for 
personal influence is to go heartily about our own 
affairs, with a friendly spirit, and let our usual 
nature have whatever effect it may. 

Still, there is one important mode of prepara- 
tion : seeing that personal influence springs from 
what we are, we can really be a good deal. In a 
former paper, on The Ideal Teacher, I pointed 
this out and insisted that to be of any use in the 
classroom we teachers must bring there an al- 
ready accumulated wealth. I will not repeat what 

46 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

I have said already, for a little reflection will con- 
vince any one that when he lacks personal influ- 
ence he lacks much besides. A great example 
comes from a great nature, and we who live in 
fellowship with dependent and imitative youth 
should acquire natures large enough to serve 
both their needs and our own. Let teachers be 
big, bounteous, and unconventional, and they 
will have few backward pupils. 

Personal influence is often assumed to be 
greater the closer the intimacy. I believe the 
contrary to be the case. Familiarity, says the 
shrewd proverb, breeds contempt. And certainly 
the young, who are little trained in estimating 
values, when brought into close association with 
their elders are apt to fix their attention on petty 
points and so to miss the larger lines of char- 
acter. These they see best across an interval 
where, though visible only in outline, they are 
clear, unconfused with anything else, and so 
productive of their best effect. For the immature, 
distance is a considerable help in inducing en- 
chantment, and nothing is so destructive of high 
influence as a slap-on-the-back acquaintance. One 

47 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

who is to help us much must be above us. A 
teacher should carefully respect his own dignity 
and no less carefully that of his pupil. In our 
eagerness to help, we may easily cheapen a fine 
nature by intruding too frequently into its re- 
serves ; and, on the other hand, I have observed 
that the boy who comes oftenest for advice is he 
who profits by it least. It is safest not to meddle 
much with the insides of our pupils. An occa- 
sional weighty word is more compulsive than 
frequent talk. 

Within the limits, then, here marked out we 
who live in these Dependent Fellowships must 
submit to be admired. We must allow our pupils 
to idealize us and even offer ourselves for imita- 
tion. It is not pleasant. Usually nobody knows 
his weaknesses better than the one who is mis^ 
taken for an example. But what a helpful mistake! 
What ennobling influences come to school-boys 
when once they can think their teacher is the 
sort of person they would like to be ! Perhaps at 
the very moment that teacher is thinking they 
are the sort of person he would like to be. No 
matter. What they admire is worthy, even if not 

48 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

embodied precisely where they imagine. In hu- 
mility we accept their admiration, knowing that 
nothing else can so enlarge their lives. As I re- 
call my college days, there rise before me two 
teachers. As I entered the lecture rooms of those 
two men, I said to myself, " Oh, if some day I 
could be like that ! " And always afterwards as 
I went to those respective rooms, the impression 
of dignity deepened. I have forgotten the lessons 
I learned from those instructors. I never can 
discharge my debt to the instructors themselves. 
Such are the moral resources of our schools. 
Without turning aside in the slightest from their 
proper aim of imparting knowledge, teachers are 
able — almost compelled — to supply their pupils 
with an intellectual, social, and personal righteous- 
ness. What more is wanted ? When such oppor- 
tunities for moral instruction are already within 
their grasp, is it worth while to incur the grave 
dangers of ethical instruction too ? I think not, 
and I even fear that the establishment of courses 
in moral theory might weaken the sense of re- 
sponsibility among the other teachers and lead 
them to attach less importance to the moraliza- 

49 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

tion of their pupils by themselves. This is bur- 
densome business, no doubt, but we must not 
shift it to a single pair of shoulders. Rather let 
us insist, when bad boys and girls continue in a 
school, that the blame belongs to the teachers 
as a whole, and not to some ethical coach. It is 
from the management and temper of a school 
that its formative influence proceeds. We cannot 
safely turn over anything so all-pervading to the 
instructors of a single department. That school 
where neatness, courtesy, simplicity, obtain ; 
where enthusiasm goes with mental exactitude, 
thoroughness of work with interest, and absence 
of artificiality with refinement ; where sneaks, 
liars, loafers, pretenders, rough persons are de- 
spised, while teachers who refuse to be mechani- 
cal hold sway — that school is engaged in moral 
training all day long. 

Yet while I hold that the systematic study of 
ethics had on the whole better be left to the 
colleges, I confess that the line which I have at- 
tempted to draw between consciousness and un- 
consciousness, between the age which is best 

50 



IN THE SCHOOLS 

directed by instinct and the age when the ques- 
tioning faculties put forward their inexorable 
demands, is a wavering one and cannot be sharply- 
drawn. By one child it is crossed at one period, 
by another at another. Seldom is the crossing 
noticed. Before we are aware we find ourselves 
in sorrow on the farther side. Happy the youth 
who during the transition time has a wise friend 
at hand to answer a question, to speak a steadying 
word, to open up the vista which at the moment 
needs to be cleared. Only one in close personal 
touch is serviceable here. But in defect of home 
guidance, to us teachers falls much of the charge 
of developing the youthful consciousness of moral 
matters naturally, smoothly, and without jar. This 
has always been a part of the teacher's office. So 
far as I can ascertain, schools of the olden time 
had in them a large amount of wholesome ethical 
training. Schools were unsystematic then ; there 
lay no examination paper ahead of them ; there 
was time for pause and talk. If a subject arose 
which the teacher deemed important for his 
pupils' personal lives, he could lead them on to 
question about it, so far as he believed discussion 

51 



MORAL INSTRUCTION 

useful. This sort of ethical training the hurry of 
our time has largely exterminated ; and now that 
wholesome incidental instruction is gone, we de- 
mand in the modern way that a clear-cut depart- 
ment of ethics be introduced into the curriculum. 
But such things do not let themselves be treated 
in departmental fashion. The teacher must still 
work as a friend. He cannot be discharged from 
knowing when and how to stimulate a question, 
from discerning which boy or girl would be helped 
by consciousness and which would be harmed. In 
these high regions our pupils cannot be ap- 
proached in classes. They require individual at- 
tention. And not because we are teachers merely, 
but because we and they are human beings, we 
must be ready with spiritual aid. 



OUTLINE 

I. ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS 

1. The demand for ethical teaching in the schools . i 

2. The importance of righteousness in a democracy . 2 

3. The moral power of the church is changed ... 2 

4. The moral guardianship of the home is impaired . 3 

5. The community turns urgently to the schools . . 5 

6. Direct ethical instruction is not feasible .... 7 

7. The sharp distinction between morals and ethics . 7 

8. Conscious study of right conduct does not prima- 

rily yield morals .8 

9. Self-criticism in the child is unwholesome ... 10 
10. The difference between ethics and other studies . 12 

II. The analogies between speech and morals ... 13 

12. The danger of dulling the child to moral distinc- 

tions 14 

13. The danger of enfeebling hearty moral action . .16 

14. There are limits to the teacher's power . . . .18 

15. A developed moral nature is basic to ethical study 19 

16. Ethical study may well wait on the consciousness 

of moral problems 20 

17. Its aim is to train the individual to make sound 

moral judgments 21 

53 



OUTLINE 



II. MORAL INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS 

1. Every human undertaking has a central aim . . 25 

2. Impartation of knowledge as the aim of teaching 27 

3. Intellectual training and the moral function . . 28 

4. Good teaching is conditioned on morality ... 29 

5. The three lines of school activity 29 

6. A school is primarily a place of learning .... 30 

7. Learning is dependent on moral guidance ... 30 

8. The school is an authoritatively organized world . 30 

9. The scholar meets in the school the inherent ne- 

cessities 31 

10. Each hour of study contributes to personal disci- 

pline 33 

11. The school can associate toil and delight ... 34 

12. It can also create a sense of orderly freedom . .35 

13. A school is unavoidably a social unit 36 

14. It is a cooperative group with a subordinating pur- 

pose 37 

15. Respect, courtesy, and helpfulness as types of per- 

sonal adjustment 38 

16. The spiritualizing influence of the playground . , 39 

17. A school is incidentally a dependent fellowship . 41 

18. Example, friendship, and personal influence as 

moral agencies 42 

19. The danger of direct imitation of externals ... 45 

20. The nobler imitation of enduring inner qualities . 46 

54 



OUTLINE 

21. Personal influence comes from being, not from 

acting 46 

22. Let teachers be big, bounteous, and unconventional 47 

23. The effect of intimacy on personal influence . . 47 

24. Teachers must submit to admiration 48 

25. The school is engaged in moral training all day 

long 50 

26. It is the teacher's office to minister to individual 

moral needs 51 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



aR(bet;j5itie cEDucational jmonogtapi^js 

Editor, Henry Suzzallo, Professor of The Philosophy of 
Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New 
York. 

NUMBERS READY OR IN PREPARATION 

General Educational Theory 

EDUCATION. An essay and other selections. By Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. Ready. 

THE MEANING OF INFANCY, and The Part Played by Infancy in 
the Evolution of Man. By John Fiske. Ready. 

EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY, and The New Definition of the Cul- 
tivated Man. By Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University. 

Ready. 

MORAL PRINCIPLES IN EDUCATION. By John Dewey, Professor 
of Philosophy, Columbia University. Ready. 

OUR NATIONAL IDEALS IN EDUCATION. By Elmer E. 
Brown, United States Commissioner of Education. In preparation. 

THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION. By Henry Suzzallo, 
Professor of the Philosophy of Education, Teachers College, Columbia 
University. In preparation. 

Administration and Supervision of Schools 

CONTINUATION SCHOOLS. By Paul H. Hanus, Professor of Educa- 
tion, Harvard University. /« preparation. 

CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF EDUCATION. By E. P.Cubbhrly, 
Professor of Education, Leland Stanford Jr. University. 

Methods of Teaching 

SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH. By George Herbert Palmer. 
Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. Ready. 

ETHICAL AND MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS. By George 
Herbert Palmer, Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. 

Ready. 

TEACHING CHILDREN TO STUDY. By Lida B. Earhart, In- 
structor in Elementary Education, Teachers College, Columbia Univer- 
sity. Ready. 

TYPES OF TEACHING. By Frederic Ernest Farrington, Asso- 
ciate Professor of Education, University of Texas. In preparation. 



Price 35 cents, each, net, postpaid 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

Boston New York Chicago 



OCT 7 1909 



